The Catholic Perspective

Fire of Mercy: A Retreat Guide on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day by RCSpirituality.org

Why is St. Joseph such a popular patron, such an important figure for Catholics of all times and places? What do we really know about him? What does he have to teach us about what it means to follow Christ and experience the fulfillment that comes from spiritual maturity, the fulfillment we all long for? Those are some of the questions we will explore in The Faithful Steward: A Lenten Retreat Guid...

The Faithful Steward: A Lenten Retreat Guide on St. Joseph by RCSpirituality.org

When Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, emerged onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome after being chosen by the conclave of cardinals as Pope John Paul II, he made history. That night, he hand-wrote his first papal homily, which set the tone for the next 26 years of his papacy. In it he said: Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power… Do...

Messenger of Mercy: A Retreat Guide on St. Paul by RCSpirituality.org

The Dawn of Mercy: An Easter Retreat Guide on Divine Mercy by RCSpirituality.org

Father of Mercies: A Lenten Retreat Guide on the Parable of the Prodigal Son by RCSpirituality.org

The Hidden Treasures of Christmas: An Advent Retreat Guide by RCSpirituality.org

Invisible Allies: A Retreat Guide on St. Michael and the Angels by RCSpirituality.org

From Sorrow to Joy: A Retreat Guide on the Sacrament of Confession by RCSpirituality.org

God is Faithful: A Retreat Guide on Mary's Assumption into Heaven by RCSpirituality.org

Listen to a retreat by Fr. John Bartunek, LC, that covers the topics of St. Peter - our first pope - and the papacy of the Catholic Church.

"Bridge to Eternity: A Retreat Guide on the Sacrament of Holy Orders," will explore this mysterious reality. * In the first meditation, we will prayerfully reflect on God’s vision for the Holy Orders of deacon, priest, and bishop. * In the second meditation, we will look at how Jesus the Good Shepherd is the model of every priest. * And in the conference, we will examine some of the reasons behind...

The appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection, as recorded in the New Testament, are, to be honest, kind of confusing. The people he appears to don’t recognize him right away, even though they knew him before. Critics of Christianity attribute these appearances to the imagination of Christ’s followers. They say that the first Christians simply invented the Resurrection, and that’s why the Gospel...

Giving is better than getting, according to the Lord; generosity leads to greater happiness (“blessedness”) than cupidity. And yet, popular culture in our post-modern world bombards us every day with the exact opposite message, constantly trying to convince us that true happiness is to be found in possessing things: The right car, the right house, the right bank account, the right smartphone, the...

A deep crisis in our post-Christian culture is the loss of a sense of our identity, a kind of cultural and religious amnesia. To overcome that crisis, we need to rediscover the truth about who we are; we need to map our spiritual genome, so to speak. This Retreat Guide, "Who You Are: A Retreat Guide on the Sacrament of Baptism", is a step in that direction, because in baptism we find the very DNA...

Advent is a liturgical season meant to be lived with deep spiritual anticipation. It is a time of year in which the Church invites us to look forward to spiritual gifts with the same kind of eagerness and delight that children feel towards material gifts. But how do we do that? The weeks leading up to Christmas and Epiphany are some of the busiest and most stressful of the year. How can we live th...

Sickness and death were not part of God’s original plan for the human family; they were consequences of original sin. And when the moment comes for us, or for those whom we love, we face a critical choice: Will we allow illness and suffering to lead us to "anguish, self-absorption…despair, and revolt against God"? Or will we allow these moments to make us “more mature” so that we can “discern…what...

If you could protect your mother from terrible suffering, would you? I think I would; I think most of us would. Mothers suffer enough in this fallen world. If we could bring them some relief, we would do so gladly. And yet, Jesus didn’t. Somehow, his love for his mother included allowing her to suffer, and to suffer deeply, painfully, terribly. Why? That’s what this Retreat Guide, A Mother’s Tears...

God’s plan for the human family was disrupted by eating. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they betrayed their friendship with God, losing the only source of lasting happiness, and put the whole world under the influence of evil. Eating the forbidden fruit also introduced death into the human family, because original sin also cut us off from God’s gift of the Tree of Life. So there you ha...

When we were baptized, each of us received a mission. And when we were confirmed, God poured his spirit into our souls to give us the strength we need to fulfill that mission. Join Fr. John Bartunek, LC, S.Th. D. for "Strength of Thousands: A Retreat Guide on the Sacrament of Confirmation" from RCSpirituality.org.

This Retreat Guide, “The Tomb and the Pearl,” is designed to help you “go forward towards the light” so that the glorious Easter Mystery can make a fresh impact on your life. In the first meditation, you will participate in St. Mary Magdalene’s transforming experience of the empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday. The second meditation shows you how to seek your own personal transformation through...

"If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?" – Romans 8:38-39 All of us would like to believe this as deeply as St. Paul did, to trust God more firmly in the midst of life’s trials. Lent is a season to strengthen our trust, precisely by turning our attention to Christ’s Passi...

In a globalized culture that has given up on God in general, not to mention the Judeo-Christian concept of God, one of the first casualties is marriage. And that’s our culture. We would be naïve to think that our culture’s distorted ideas about marriage have no affect on us — they certainly do, even if only subconsciously. To defend God’s beautiful vision for marriage, both in our own lives and i...

We have evil enemies, especially the devil and the other fallen angels, and we are vulnerable to their spiritual attacks. This shouldn’t make us panic — after all, Our Lord is infinitely more powerful than the devil — but it should keep us on our toes. In this Retreat Guide, "The Anatomy of Temptation: A Retreat Guide on David and Goliath", we are going to prepare ourselves for this spiritual batt...